Sacrifice Build Guide V1.1

This is an updated/revised version of my previous guide and I hope it enlightens you!

I do not take credit for the build/ideas etc. I realize it's been done before, it's just a guideline.

TLDR : Summon dog, boom dog, things die and you win.

TLDR Extended Version: This build focuses on the skillsl Sacrifice and Summon Zombie Dogs. Through gear you will reduce your Summon Zombie Dogs to 0 seconds which allows sacrifice to be used as a main ability. There are many different ways/versions of the Sacrifice build however I will only be covering one.

Active Skills: Sacrifice(For The Master) - This is your only offensive ability in the build. The skill sacrifices your dogs causing them to explode for 275% weapon damage each and through the rune gives you a 24,808 heal. This means, assuming all dogs hit their target you will be dealing 1100% damage every time you use sacrifice.

Summon Zombie Dogs(Final Gift) - Sacrifice needs sacrifices, what better than a couple of zombie dogs? The build revolves around getting this skill to 0 second cool down through gear and Tribal Rites. The Health Globes provided from the rune feed your Gruesome Feast passive and help keep you and your party in tip top shape!

Spirit Walk(Jaunt) - This is the only mandatory skill I feel Witch Doctors must have for any build. I use this both offensively and defensively.

Soul Harvest(Soul to Waste) - While the rune is not so important, I prefer the extra duration. One less skill you have to spam = more time spent spamming dogs. Giving 130intellegence per mob for a total of 650 Intelligence, this skill can not be passed up.

Optional Active SkillsThese are the two skills that I feel you can mess around with without effecting the build. Go with whatever you want, but I will give you my personal choices.

Big Bad VooDoo(Slam Dance) - I can't pass up 20% attack speed and 30% damage, it's too good. This skill lets me get 900k+ crits PER DOG when I'm fully buffed with Soul Harvest and 5stacks of Gruesome Feast. Not to mention it helps my team members as well.

Horrify(Frightening Aspect) - Nine times out of Ten I use this skill for the armor boost alone and avoid fearing mobs unless I believe it will save me. Often I use it in conjuction with Spirit Walk for extra protection against a nasty group of mobs. Will possibly change this out as I get better gear.

Passives Tribal Rites - This is a MUST HAVE passive for this build. Removing 11seconds from Summon Zombie Cooldown.

No Mana Worries - You will NEVER run out of Mana if you use the skills I suggested.

Free To Move - You do not have to worry about positioning if you do not wish to. Let your dogs chase your targets and enable yourself to worry about dodging stuff. Or, if you are more like me.. Get right in the action, summon your dogs right in your enemies face and let'em rip!

Free Health Orbs - In a group? They'll love you! Because you should be using Final Gift health orbs will be more abundant than usual keeping both you and your group in tip top shape. ** Did you know that wizards have a passive giving them 30arcane power for every health orb that's picked up?! (Awesome Wizard Build that works perfectly with sacrifice wd! http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5724355066 )** Did you know Demon Hunters have a passive giving them 20Hatred + 2 Discipline for every health orb picked?!

Flexible - The only two real mandatory skills are Summon Zombie Dog/Sacrifice. Leaving the rest of your skills completely up to you. (Although, arguably Soul Harvest and Spirit Walk are mandatory, they aren't.)

Cons Gear Dependent - You HAVE to have gear with -cooldown on summon zombie dog.

Lag - Yes, you heard me, lag. This build causes lower end PCs to lag and in some cases even higher end builds. Together in a 4man group on a double elite pull we managed to get 3/4 of us booted to desktop with a pretty error message.

Low dps? - Your DPS sheet will drop in dps, guaranteed. I went from 110k unbuffed to 63k DPS unbuffed. Why? Mainly the homunculus offhand and sacrifice of one rare ring + critical hit strike on helmet(You can get them with crit, just expensive. I haven't upgraded to a crit helmet yet.)

Gear

Lets talk gear shall we. The whole backbone to this build is having 0seconds cooldown on Summon Zombie Dogs. The gear that exists with -cooldown is the following;

I recommend the following gear Helmet: Rare OR Visage of Giyua -- Important to get 8-9seconds on Zombie Dog CooldownAmulet: Rare OR Tal Amulet -- Focus on getting Crit/Crit Dmg/Attack Speed (That Order)Shoulders: Choose your poison, many people use Vile Ward.Gloves: Crit -> Crit Dmg -> Attack SpeedBracers: Laccunni Prowlers -- 9% Attack Speed and Critical Hit (If you can not afford Crit Hit, get rare bracers with crit hit instead) Armor: Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit -- 9% attack speedBelt: Witching Hour -- If you can not afford it, rare belt. Pants: Choose Your PoisonRings: SoJ(5-6seconds depending on helmet) + Hellfire RingBoots: Fire Walkers - Enables you to break barrels/doors without having to blow up dogs. Not necessary, but imo useful. Otherwise I'd suggest Iceclimbers. Weapon: Echoing Fury -- Stable, high damage and fast with decent crit dmg. I highly suggest getting both life leach and a socket on the weapon. (Use the socket for 100% Critical Hit Damage) While expensive, it's worth it. If you can't afford it, get some other weapon with lifesteal until you can OR risk it for a biscuit and go with crit damage + socket instead for optimum damage output. (Just watch out for those reflect mobs!) Offhand: Homunculus -- 20seconds on Zombie Dog and as high dps as you can afford.

FAQ:

But you can get Zombie Dogs with X Passive or Y skill with * Rune! You don't need all that expensive gear! While true, you can get zombie dogs through other means it's not the way I prefer it. It goes on a chance of a chance of a chance and that's not reliable.

X or Y build costs so much less money to do and is more efficient! It's great that the Witch Doctor has so many versatile and viable builds, isn't it! This build is NOT for every one and I highly suggest it for people who play with others simply because it makes you a healdoctor with an attitude. (Lots of damage! =) ) This build also works perfectly fine solo.

How does this build work with MP level X? The main reason I decided to go through with this build was FOR MP level X. As I've mentioned before, no mana costs lots of heals. It makes longer battles much easier. I'm currently farming MP5 without too many deaths per act clear. (I do die, but don't we all? =) ) I'm also not using a Life leach weapon, which I recommend and am currently saving up for.

Can I have 1-2 seconds on the Summon Zombie Dog Cooldown? Of course you can, but you can also have 45 seconds. Some claim there is no difference between 0-1seconds however I have tested it myself and find that there is a difference, however small, it is there and I fully recommend getting 0seconds.

*Phew* Newly revised guide is done! Small, minor improvements changing things such as hesitations in the wording, typos and even hesitations in the actual skill choices. Also added a FAQ! Your question not in the FAQ? Please, ask away and I'll answer!

////EDIT///Hello every one! I've recently been getting some requests in game to help out with this build and I would like to inform you that I no longer play on Softcore nor do I have any more information to give than this guide.. I have not kept myself updated with D3 over the past few months and I sadly can not be of any further assistance. I hope this guide can still prove useful to you.

Trouble surviving?1) "+pickup radius"-affix.You should get at least 7 pickup radius.You can stand still and you will pickup all the health-globes that spawn around you. This will increase your survivability noticeably.

I have tested this and 7 pickup radius is enough to pick up even the furthest globes that spawn from your rune. Of course the more you have, the easier it is to pick the globes when you are moving, but 7 is enough when you are standing.

2) "+Extra health from health-globes"-affixWhen I upgraded my gear to have +extra health from health-globes, I noticed a significant boost to my survivability. So this affix is something that you might want to keep in mind.

3) Increase your attack speed.The faster you spawn and explode the dogs, the faster you get HP.

The sole reason for my deaths is that I couldn't sacrifice the dogs fast enough. In my opinion Life Steal is only needed when you are facing an elite with "reflect damage"-affix (and even then, there needs to be at least 2+ of them for you to notice your HP dropping from my experience).

4) Increase your health.The higher HP pool you have, the more time you buy for sacrificing. The faster your attack speed is, the less HP you need (and vice versa).

5) Smart use of skills.Choose: Spirit Vessel, Spirit Walk - Jaunt, Horrify - Frightening Aspect.By using Horrify and Jaunt in succession, you are looking at a 11 seconds of high defensive stats with a ~80% uptime.

I can do MP 10 without too much of a trouble (some elites are annoying), but it is quite boring. Currently I have been farming hellfire rings on MP 7 by skipping normal monsters and pulling a couple of elites at the same time.

Playing as a support:You can play as a healer if you get fast enough attack speed. I suggest using a white dagger with 20% attack speed for this. You will easily have over 2.0 attack speed, which means the health-globes will appear very fast.

On top of that, other classes benefit from health-globes as well:

Witch Doctor - Gruesome Feast:Whenever you are healed by a health-globe, you gain 10% of your maximum Mana and 10% Intelligence for 10 seconds. The Intelligence bonus can stack up to 5 times.

Demon Hunter - Vengeance:Your maximum Hatred is increased by 25. In addition, you gain 20 Hatred and 2 Discipline whenever you are healed by a health-globe.

Wizard - Power Hungry:Gain 30 Arcane Power whenever you are healed by a health-globe.

Barbarian - Pound of Flesh:Increases the chance of finding a health-globe by 25% and you gain 100% additional life from health-globes.

This means that most of the other classes do not have to worry about their resources either. Basically you are the group's CCer, resource manager and the healer. Talk about having a role!

You should bold "Pros" and "cons" and put more space above and below them (like you did with Gear and FaQ). It's hard to notice them.

PS: You have a typo on Lacuni Prowlers and there is a "Th" after the first sentence "Gear dependent". I think when you edited, you forgot to remove that.´I am also quite sure that Mara's Kaleidoskope can roll for 9 second cooldown reduction instead of 8.

Cheers for the info on Mara's, going to look it up. Will also get around to fixing the typos/bolding :)

And thanks for letting me use your tips/tidbits as well mate! =)

Yes, sadly this build is VERY expensive. Give it time, prices should drop as more people try it out/decide if they do/don't like it and more SoJs drop. As for homuncu, there are people hoarding them. They will get bored and sell em off eventually :)

I played with a build like this one. I mainly play in public games. Most of the times I played with it, almost all the other players quit the game after a while and I stayed alone. I guess it's annoying for other players :D

Here is a bit of proof for the build's damage potential:http://i9.aijaa.com/b/00949/11147741.jpg

The damage is from one dog alone. I have 4 dogs, so if all crit, I am looking at ~5mil damage as AoE per sacrifice cast. At the time of the screenshot, my unbuffed DPS was ~65k on my character sheet :)

Heya Hoyste, according to http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/maras-kaleidoscope it can only get to 8seconds, if you could find one in game however and take a SS for me i'll change the information accordingly. (I know game guide can be wrong some times :) But it's the only info I can find about it)

For solo play, I would actually recommend the Garg, preferably with the Bruiser (stun) rune. Stuns are your best friends when getting in close for max-dmg-instapops, and if he tanks/blocks an elite, you can usually go to town on them.

For group play, I'd go with BBV or with Confusion / Paranoia. The 20% +dmg from Paranoia are quite helpful too.

Your worst enemies are those that prevent you from popping your dogs in their face, so take extra care around mobs with knockback, frozen or any hard-hitting ranged (fallen prophets at MP7+ can HURT).

If surrounded, do not ever stop popping your dogs, or you will probably die. Get used to summoning - popping them as fast as you can and learn your timings.

This is one of the most funny builds I've seen in D3 so far. After I got my ring (holy baby jesus 100m) and below 0s, I literally cried tears of joy.

Do not ever attempt this build with less than 0s CD tho. You will die horribly from having the CD.

Thanks for the input Noz, I actually found that Gargant is very handy as well.. I've been using BBV and Garg and I removed my fear for garg.. Not sure though, I really miss my fear.. On the other hand, garg is nice. I haven't decided :)

I'm pretty new the 0cd/sacrifice dogs build since I just got 0cd dog last week. I've been using a similar build to Norzal just changing the passives and skills a bit when I'm tanking ubers. Want to ask all the sacrifice users out there any idea what is the optimal way to spam dogs/sacrifice? Personally I have been using a macro to bind the skills summon dogs and sacrifice one after the other. Something like when I hold the "f2" key, it continuously summon dogs and sacrifice.

Hi. Build is great but if something is great it will be nerfed;). I just wanted to say that yesterday i was on uber with my friend mage. when you hex Zoltun into chicken (or pig) Archont doesnt proc crits when he hits it. Anyway ive noticed that if hes hexed my dmg dont show up when i attack it. Maybe its a bug or maybe its just me;) Try it.